Political Marketplace in Sites of Intractable Conflicts: Implications to humanitarian aid and development delivery of NGOs

Using Alex de Waal’s political marketplace framework, this study examines how NGOs contribute to the political marketplace reproduction in South Sudan. This study employs process tracing as its methodology and uses data from Aid Worker Security Database, UN OCHA’s Humanitarian Access Incidence Overview, and other reports. The study also outlines how NGOs and political actors interact in South Sudan’s political market and the dilemmas faced by both actors. Likewise, the study demonstrates how the political marketplace framework views NGO activities. Analyzing the transmission of causal forces from NGO activities to political marketplace reproduction reveals that NGOs potentially contribute to political market reproduction when political finance is low and when NGOs shift the incentive structure of political market actors. This paper argues that the consistent but low-intensity attacks against aid workers and their assets have been the empirical manifestation of political actors’ strategy concerning NGO activities in South Sudan. The paper reveals that NGO activities transmit their causal force that contributes to reproducing the political marketplace in South Sudan when such activities enable the persistence of the exchange of loyalty and violence that is the ultimate expression of the political marketplace logic.